Rich is gone for what feels like a very long time, although it’s hard to say how long exactly: long enough that Rafael has time to feel anxious, and then foolish, and then anxious again, and then finally for his nerves to burn out and exhaustion to take their place.

  He’s fallen into a doze curled up on the big bed when the door finally clicks open. A quiet rumble of a voice says “Rafael?” softly, and Rafael surfaces from a dizzying half-dream and pushes himself up with a start, looking around.

  Rich is standing in the doorway, eyes wide on Rafael. As Rafael meets his stare, a vivid pink flush sweeps across his pale cheeks and up to the tips of his ears.

  “Oh, uh, hey,” Rich says, and pulls his gaze away from Rafael’s bare chest, focusing hard on his face as that rosy blush continues to creep down his throat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up. The light was still on, so I thought—sorry. Didn’t realize it was getting so late.”

  “Yes,” Rafael murmurs, still heavy with sleep, and stretches, taking care to show himself off to good effect. His heart is beating faster now, despite the sleepy drag of his thoughts. He’s seen people look at him like that before, years ago: Rich wants him.

  “Rich,” he says, and Rich goes still, wide eyes fixed on him. “Would you still—Do you want…?”

  Rich licks his lips but doesn’t answer the half-formed question, waiting for Rafael’s laggard brain to pull words together and speak more clearly.

  Rafael pulls in a breath, forcing his tongue into better function. “We have tonight to do anything we like,” he says, and smiles cautiously at Rich, looking up through his lashes. “Is there something in particular that you would like?”

  Rich’s vivid blush only deepens at that. “Yeah? I mean, no, yeah, obviously, but only if you want me to. You don’t have to wait for me if you wanna get off, okay? You could do whatever you wanna do on your own.”

  There’s no trace of artifice in his expression—but he also doesn’t look unwilling so much as hesitant. Rafael nods slowly, affecting his own mask of shy hesitation as naturally as breathing, sliding a hand down his bare stomach, cupping against the anticipatory rise of his arousal, and says, “That’s very kind of you to say, Rich.”

  “It’s not—it’s just not bein’ a total asshole,” Rich says, but his cheeks are still bright pink, and his eyes keep roaming and then being pulled sharply back to Rafael’s face. Rich says, “So, should I make like a hopper and jump ship or—?” and takes a step back toward the door.

  “No,” Rafael says, more urgently than he means to, losing some of the shy facade in his startled dismay. “No—it’s very kind of you, but, if you’ll have me, I’d rather it be by your hands.” He hesitates, then drops the mask enough to admit, “It’s been so long, I… it was wonderful, before.” Intoxicating, being touched by somebody else and actually feeling good, and being allowed to come at the end. It's been so long Rafael doesn't remember the last time.

  Rich is still wide-eyed, pink-cheeked, raptly attentive, so Rafael doesn’t temper his smile, withdraw, apologize.

  “If coming over here and touching me yourself would be to your satisfaction,” he finishes. “It would certainly be to mine.”

  “Okay, cool,” Rich says breathlessly, and comes to join him on the bed. Rafael had forgotten since Rich left the room how big the man is—not quite as toweringly tall as Carraway, but broad as a wall, with biceps the size of Rafael’s head. Huge, muscular men might once have thrilled Rafael more easily before Carraway smugly ruined that for him as well, but the coordinated self-control Rich displays is breathtaking enough in its own way.

  “So, um.” Rich's eyes flicker across Rafael's body, to his lips, up to his eyes and drop again. “How do you feel about me sucking you off?”

  “Oh,” Rafael says, a bare, stunned breath, and has to remind himself with increasingly desperate focus to be careful. Be attractive, demure, appealing, he can’t afford to look selfish.

  “If that’s what you’d like, too, then I’d be glad of it,” he says, as invitingly as humanly possible.

  “I’d like it a lot,” Rich says, and cups the side of Rafael’s neck in one huge hand, astonishingly lightly, and he leans in to kiss Rafael soft and slow.

  He hadn’t expected such a tender overture. Rafael twitches and locks up again for a second, but he’s a performer and ability to improvise through sudden shocks has always been a vital skill. He gets himself back under control, reciprocates—holds himself back this time, because he’s not helping some lost, scared, shaking boy who looks like he’s about to cry. He doesn’t know what they are to be to each other now, but some decorum should apply. He can’t just take control again.

  Rich seems to like it well enough for a few minutes, and then he pulls back, frowning a little. Studies Rafael's face, opens his mouth and closes it again, chewing on his lip. Then he runs a hand through his hair, sighs, and just goes for the fastening of Rafael's pants, a faint crease still between his brows.

  With Carraway Rafael would have known what to do, how to ask, how to steer this right, but he’s frustratingly, terrifyingly in the dark right now. Fine. No way out but forward. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, once more unto the breach and all that, although King Henry never suffered the soul-crushing despair of playing fucktoy to a monster for half a decade, so fuck him.

  “Rich,” says Rafael with a fragile, careful mask of quiet respect, wrestling down the tones of worry and frustration that seek to escape from behind it. “Am I doing something wrong?”

  Rich gives him a startled look, which is somewhat reassuring at least. "No! I, no, you're just, you wanna get off, I get it, it's fine. I'll stop… dragging it out, sorry." That last is an almost shamefaced mumble, along with slumped shoulders.

  There’s no Carraway here, but that sad, scared young man from Carraway’s office is back. Rafael is struck again by the urge to guide him along, to show him the right way to do this, but there isn’t one, and it feels increasingly like Rafael himself is the cruel master setting Rich unwinnable challenges, which is alarming, upsetting, and also deeply stupid.

  Rafael should most likely just stop talking before he can make things worse, but nothing he’s done tonight has been received in the way it was intended. He doesn’t know his lines, he doesn’t know his audience. At this rate if he goes silent and allows Rich to get on with it, Rich will assume it’s a matter of revulsion and never touch him again, and there’s a huge hand on Rafael’s thigh making it increasingly hard to think rationally.

  “I thought,” Rafael says, and stalls out, trying not to look panicky and out of his depth and probably failing. “I didn’t mean to, ah.”

  “It's fine, man,” Rich says, smiling a little. His eyes are tired, but he's obviously trying to pull himself together. “You're not really into the whole soppy romantic treatment, or whatever, that's fine, I'll just.” He shrugs, apparently running out of words, and gets Rafael's pants open. “I’m a champion at sucking a new friend’s dick, I promise. You won’t regret it.”

  —And stops as Rafael’s hand jerks down and grabs his wrist, apparently startling both of them. Rafael stares down at it, at Rich, at his hand, back up to Rich’s face.

  “I—No, I only—no?” Saying the word makes his heart rise to strangle him, but a desperate madness is rising as well. He doesn’t want it to go like this, he’s so tired of playing this role. “I was just—trying to be—”

  Rich is staring at him, looking alarmed now, his hands entirely withdrawn. Rafael freezes, the dizzy horror of forgetting his lines on stage except he was never given a script, no chance to practice, no idea what could possibly be right to say, here. He stares at Rich instead, struggling to master the panicky rhythm of his breathing, and then finds his tongue and blurts out in a rush, “I just don’t know what you want from me yet but I’ll learn, I swear, if you’ll only be patient with me I’ll learn to please you however you like, I didn’t mean to bore you or upset you or make you think I’m—cold, or—I’m sorry—I want to be someone who can—I want this to work—”

  “No,” Rich is saying, “no, man, shh, it's okay, you're good.” He puts a hand on Rafael's upper back, rubbing, and then makes a surprised little noise when Rafael sucks in a breath, dives forward and kisses him with unfeigned desperation. He pushes up into Rich’s space, feeling him go off-balance and the way his huge arms with all that terrifying amount of muscle tense up into massive iron swells when he’s startled. Rafael pushes, leaning on him, and he can’t guide the man over backward, but he can take Rich’s jaw in one hand and turn it up, holding him where he is and kissing him until both of them run out of breath.

  “I want you,” Rafael promises recklessly. “Rich, please, it’s been so long. I want this. I want anything.”

  Rich's pupils are blown when Rafael pulls back, and he's breathing hard. “Okay,” he says, and as hungry as he looks, his huge hands still rest so tentatively on Rafael's bare sides. “Okay, I just, I don't wanna push you into anything, I don't—I'm not him. I don’t ever wanna be like him.” He takes a deep, rasping breath and the hands on Rafael’s sides go even lighter, as if Rafael were spun sugar. “So don't, don't just agree to shit because I want it, okay?”

  “Rich,” says Rafael, and firms his grip on the side of the man’s heavy jaw. “Tonight has been the first time this year I’ve been given permission to come, by my own hand or any other’s. I’m going to like whatever you’re willing to do. I know I’m… too cold, too quiet, but I can assure you that you’ve no need to doubt your welcome.”

  “Shit, man,” Rich breathes with gratifying horror. “That's. Fuck. This whole year? I’d be dying for it.”

  “Indeed,” Rafael manages, and draws Rich upwards, inwards. They kiss again, less desperate this time, more exploratory. Rich is a thrillingly responsive partner, bold but not overwhelming. He gives a soft moan every so often as he’s kissed, shifting restlessly closer.

  “It’s, hh, it’s cool, if you’re quiet, too,” he says softly, breathlessly, his huge hands kneading gently on the curve of Rafael’s waist, on his bare hip. “You don’t hafta talk like it’s. It’s not bad, it’s not a bad thing, it’s cool, as long as I know you’re havin’ a good time.”

  He tugs a little, hopefully, and Rafael lets himself be pulled, almost in Rich’s lap as the man goes back to kissing him with a will. There doesn’t seem to be any point arguing with him, even if he’s wrong. Rafael’s been told a thousand times, by a hundred men, since he was brought here—cold, flat, quiet, boring—but Rich will find that out in his own time.

  In the meantime, Rafael allows himself to relax against the sturdy shoulders and chest he’s leaning on, still trying to hold himself back a little but rapidly losing the fight. Every time Rich’s hands gently shift on his skin, hunger and longing spike up in him. It’s been so many years since he had any sort of control or power, and with every delicate touch of those huge hands the mad urge rises to pin this enormous Hastings down and bite his marble-white throat until it bruises, bring him to a point of shaking, helpless pleasure without worrying that a harsh, disinterested audience will rule his performance worthy of punishment.

  And he could, perhaps, if he could only be brave enough to try. Rafael indulges himself to bite Rich’s lip gently, kisses him a little harder, and by the time he pulls back again, Rich’s lips are flushed and pink, deeper red where Rafael’s teeth marked him.

  “The field’s chief flower,” Rafael murmurs to himself, because—well. Because he can’t help himself just now, any more than he can help it when he runs his thumb past the bitten-red skin. “Sweet beyond compare…” He darts back in for another kiss, too hungry for it to stop but too greedy to focus. “More white and red than doves or roses are…”

  Rich laughs, startled and breathy, and sighs, “Aw, fuck, aren’t you sweet,” with artless sincerity, then kisses Rafael ever more fiercely. When he breaks off, it's to nuzzle at Rafael's neck, nipping his earlobe, kissing and sucking under it.

  “What do you like, hon?” he says against Rafael's skin. “Tell me what to touch, tell me how to make you happy. Is this good?” Another kiss at his neck. “This?” A thumb brushes across one nipple, teases the piercing there.

  It shouldn’t be startling to be expected to give feedback on things like this, but it’s been a long time since anybody cared. Rafael arches a little into both touches, a faint sigh making its way out of him on the back of an almost-silent moan.

  “Both… very good,” he manages, when it finally registers that words are probably also required. “Here, too.” He takes the back of Rich’s neck, squeezes firmly and guides that mouth down to the line of his collarbones, the sensitive hollow of his throat. Rich’s lips are soft and half-open and the brush of hot breath and the suggestion of slick heat sends a hot shiver up and down Rafael’s spine, raises goosebumps on his arms. His dick, already well-roused, twitches and drips hotly between them.

  “Mm, nice,” Rich says in a deep, pleased rumble, and starts licking and sucking on Rafael's collarbones, thumbs stroking and rolling his nipples, and Rafael starts shivering again and can’t stop. His breath is coming fast and shaky now, his hand kneading distractedly at the thick muscle of Rich’s back and neck, clinging on.

  Rich breaks off for another long kiss at one particularly desperate squeeze, then goes back to what he was doing. “Anything else special?” he asks, nuzzling the hollow of Rafael's throat. “I wanna know, wanna make it good.”

  I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer, croons Rafael’s mind, the constant tides of a lifetime of memorized verse rising persistently to his tongue. Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry—ha, yes, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. Because if he wants that pretty, flushed mouth he needs to be capable of asking for it.

  “I, ha-aah, if,” he manages aloud, and fails completely to ask anything of the sort. It’s been such a long time since he was touched before tonight, let alone with such tenderness and care. He’s dizzy with it already, desperate and dying for it, he just wants… “More? More. Just, hha, more.”

  Rich laughs softly. “Okay, hon, I gotcha,” he says, and lifts Rafael bodily off his lap to lay out on the bed, shifting over between his legs. For a moment, it’s breathtakingly too much, a looming figure braced over him in shadow—then Rich kisses his neck once more, dotingly, and shifts his massive bulk with precise delicacy, plying his lips along a collarbone, tonguing at the studs through Rafael’s nipples, stroking his immense hands across ribs and sides, the lines of his hipbones, the length of his thighs. Rafael has gotten no less sensitive since last time he was touched, and the tectonic gentleness with which those hands trace over his skin sends him mindlessly trembling, panting, pressing into the touch.

  He wants badly, desperately, to ask for even more, Rich’s slick hand stroking him and drawing him along higher. Instead he just lies there and shakes, clutching Rich’s head to him and struggling to think of the right words to beg as the pleasure closes around him like a fist and narrows his world to a few desperate fragments. He has to do it right, has to find the words that are wanted of him, and if his begging doesn’t satisfy he’ll be cast aside to wait again and he can’t, he can’t.

  He’s drawn back to himself, simply and unexpectedly, by a hand pausing at the crease of his hip—the faintest brush of fingertips.

  “Hey,” Rich murmurs, and his thumb shifts minutely, brushing back and forth at the base of Rafael’s achingly ready dick, close enough he could cry. “This okay?”

  “Please,” Rafael whispers, and arches his back in mute supplication.

  “Nice,” Rich says, his voice low enough to thrum in Rafael’s very bones. He nudges Rafael's legs wider and goes down on his elbows, and for a second Rafael thinks—but instead of Rich's mouth landing on Rafael's dick, it goes for his inner thigh. Rich's powerful hands run gently up and down his body, playing with his nipples, stroking his collarbones, hips, everything, and Rich licks and nuzzles and sucks hot little marks on the insides of Rafael's thighs until they're shaking.

  God have mercy, he can’t, he can’t do this, he can’t wait any more.

  “Please sir,” Rafael gets out, words dragging out of him on automatic, in a trembling, broken whisper. Lines he could never forget, can only remember, at times like this. “—Please let me come please, please, I swear I need it, I need you, mercy, please…”

  “Oh, shit, hey, you don’t gotta do that,” says a soft, deep voice over him, “you can come whenever, it's okay, here,” and there's a mouth on Rafael's dick, sucking as it slides all the way down. Tongue rubbing firm and clever, heat and suction and there's a throat squeezing the head of his dick again and again and Rafael is coming before he has time to try not to, with a startled, cracked little sob of shocked pleasure.

  It feels just as good this time, and the mouth and hands stay on him, soothing him through it, steadying the wracking jolts of pleasure to something smoother and sweeter. Rafael slumps after he’s done, gasping and stunned, head swimming with it.

  “Thank you, sir,” he mumbles on automatic, and shudders all over as another aftershock drags through him. “Nnhhf. Hha. Thank you…” His mind is a mess, all thrown out of order from coming that hard, and he wants to laugh, or possibly cry, or maybe do that again as soon as physically possible.

  “Sorry, man,” Rich sighs, shifting over next to Rafael on his side, and then tugs Rafael up against him, thick arms gentle as they wrap around him. “I didn't mean to make you wait, I was just tryna make it real good—you can tell me, y’know. If I push too far, you want something different, lemme know. You don't have to, like, sail through a storm to get there. Not with me. Promise.”

  “Yes,” says Rafael a little numbly, and shudders, out of breath and shivering and already wanting to come again. “Hhha. Alright.” Normally he would need to be up again already, asking what else he could do for Carraway, what he should be doing to one of the other boys, there wouldn't be a second to breathe. But this isn't normally. Right now he can luxuriate in being held, chest heaving, pleasure still ricocheting around his body. Which… is good, because Rafael's self-control is occupied holding the rest of himself back from the composition of grateful verses about the verdant green of Rich's watchful eyes, the rosy dawn stealing across the marble crags of his stern face, and how utterly transcendent his mouth is.

  “That was wonderful,” Rafael says instead of any of those things, as steadily as he can. “I wasn’t enduring—anything, your mouth is—” no, no poetry. His tongue has been foolishly uncontrolled for long enough already tonight. “It was very good. Thank you. I just… it was just force of habit. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, good, okay.” Rich gives a soft sigh into Rafael’s hair. “I was worried for a minute there, but good.” He laughs a little. “I try.”

  Rafael wants to ask—all kinds of things, really, like How old are you, anyway, or Where did you learn to touch someone like that, or Are you always this kind. He’s not sure what’s alright to ask, though, what might ruin this delicate gentleness he’s being shown. The last thing he wants is to pay Rich back for everything he’s done by ruining the mood.

  He has to make some attempt at reciprocity, though. And some questions seem less obviously hazardous than others.

  “May I return the favor?” he asks.

  Rich startles. “What? I mean. Fuck, yeah, thanks, if you—You don’t owe me, okay? But… if you’re sure you wanna—”

  Rafael dares to nip at the mottled pink and cream of Rich’s throat, admonishing. “Enough of that,” he says. “I’m very sure.”

  Rich gives a rumbling shudder of a laugh, and Rafael feels it all along the pressed-close lengths of their bodies. “Okay, okay. That’s me told.”

  He releases his close hold on Rafael and kneels up, stripping himself bare in a few economical motions, then settling himself so as to be reclining back against the headboard of the bed, in a pose more inviting than commanding. The way he moves his own superhuman bulk around is fascinating, especially this close: not gingerly, but methodically, as if every shift of weight has been planned long in advance.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Rafael finds himself between the man’s legs, draped across the span of a broad marble thigh, regarding an extremely prominent erection. But for all his physical excitement, there's a calculated patience to the way Rich is gazing down at him: as if he's only interested in what Rafael intends to do with him, not expecting Rafael to submit to any particular course of action.

  When Rafael lays his hand against the pale shaft and gives it a slow, measuring stroke, as if weighing a vegetable at market, Rich actually breaks into a wry smile.

  “I won't get my feelings hurt if you were expecting a little more meat on these bones,” he rumbles. “You wanna fuck off and go find a bigger cut anywhere else, just lemme know.”

  Rafael gives a choked, incredulous bark of laughter, and hastily covers his mouth with his free hand. Rich only grins unrepentantly and draws Rafael lightly up past his stomach until he's in range to kiss.

  God, he kisses well. Deeply but precisely, intently, his huge hands rubbing and kneading all over Rafael's back and shoulders, then nudging his thighs here and then there, so they're slotted together at the groin and all that warm and heavy weight is bowing tautly beneath Rafael's own rebounding erection.

  Rafael can't help but lean into the thrilling pleasure of it, even as he admires the silent, subtle artistry of Rich’s submission. He rolls himself onto his back, he draws Rafael atop him, he lets Rafael have command of the pace, the pressure. Even now their heads and shoulders are positioned so that Rich is tilting his mouth up to Rafael’s, as if in supplication. It's easy to pull up and away for a breather, easy to lean down and in for another spell of kissing deeper, pressing harder, feeling the body beneath him shift and tremble.

  Carraway couldn't have taught this masterful subtlety, for all that he seemed to revel in his mastery of the young Hastings, and an inherent taste for degradation would, Rafael thinks, be more overt. Rich doesn't exactly want Rafael to subjugate him, but to… lead the way. Take some initiative. Do as he likes.

  “Lotion?” Rafael murmurs, near voiceless with nervous arousal, and Rich reaches out to retrieve a large squeeze bottle of inoffensive, unscented moisturizer. It takes surprisingly little coordination for Rafael to get a slick palmful and Rich to put the bottle aside again, and then Rafael is reaching down to where their two markedly dissimilar lengths press against one another. This draws a sigh from both of them, then a wicked little rumble of amusement from Rich.

  “That's nice,” he says, and hums deep in his throat as Rafael tests the slick glide.

  His own hand is insufficient to properly grip the both of them together, so instead he works his grip just around the head of Rich’s shaft, pumping his palm back and forth across the broad crown, circling his thumb delicately around the abused tenderness of the slit. This makes Rich squirm, gasping and moaning roughly, his clever mouth finally going clumsy and uncertain beneath Rafael’s.

  “That's—good, yeah, wow, perfect—more?”

  Rafael is glad to comply, stroking and kneading for long, satisfying minutes as Rich gets markedly less and less composed, as the constraints on his inhuman size and power fray and the reflexive flex and shudder of his hips and thighs start to rock Rafael like tidal waves. It was different, kneeling before him in Carraway’s private domain, than it is to actually ride him, and feel every stifled movement ripple up through his own body.

  Rafael wonders if he could ever truly mount a length like this, and feel so much of this man so deeply and intimately. It's a thrillingly insane desire. It only gets more compelling when Rich’s hands cup his chest, rub his tender piercings, trail down to his thighs, his ass, as if Rafael's pleasure was still paramount, as if Rafael were the one who needed all the attention. The combination of power and consideration is nothing if not intoxicating.

  “I’m close,” Rich gasps, and Rafael can feel it, too, the rapid pulsing of the flesh under his fingers, the steady trickle of precome.

  “You can come for me,” Rafael tells him, a breathy whisper: “Come on, Rich, let me feel you.” He can’t manage anything more commanding than that, but it seems to be enough. A few strokes more, Rafael’s mouth pressed just under Rich’s ear, biting at the fragrant sweat-slicked skin, and Rich’s hands go iron-hard against Rafael’s body, a thrilling shock of power and pressure as the man cries out with pleasure and shakes apart beneath Rafael’s body. Wet heat floods Rafael’s grip, stripes his arm, even spatters against his chest. As careful as Rich has been with him all this time, at the moment of climax he still spills over, a titan undone…

  He’s easy to tease, too. Rafael strokes the silky wet mess of his softening shaft, feeling the great frame beneath him quake and the broad chest give rise to soft saw-edged little gasps of “Oh, fuck, oh fuck,” like some vast engine spinning down. He’s breathing fast and deep and there’s tears caught in his short red lashes, his mouth pink and glistening as he struggles to master himself and Rafael’s touch undoes his every effort.

  Finally, almost plaintively, he whispers, “C’mon, lemme, please?” and Rafael comes abruptly back to his senses.

  “Yes, of course,” he says, “my apologies,” and sits back on his heels, more than a little lightheaded with his own desperate breathlessness. Even now—Rich’s soft mouth, and the jewel-bright glitter of sweat trailing down his bull neck, the pearly drops of come across that broad, blushing chest—even now Rafael wants more, wants to do it all over again.

  He licks his hand clean of Rich’s come, a well-practiced necessity, but a genuine pleasure in this particular instance. It’s not the best he’s ever tasted, but that isn’t why he does it, anyway— it’s about the satisfaction of a job well done, or at least done with, and in this case a job he’d dearly like another shot at. It’s about the way Rich makes a shivering sound, buzzing under Rafael’s weight, and stares at him. He sucks off each fingertip and kisses down the inside of his own wrist, and Rich watches him the entire time, his dark green gaze slowly coming more alert, more appreciative.

  “You make that look so good,” he finally murmurs, low and throaty, and it hits somewhere small and selfish in the pit of Rafael’s chest and burns there. When Rich takes Rafael’s damp hand, Rafael lets him, and when Rich presses his own pale pink lips to the pad of Rafael’s thumb, Rafael finds himself abruptly, tremblingly close to his own climax.

  “Would you mind a little more?” Rafael whispers, too desperate to play anything safe anymore, and crooks his thumb enough to slide against Rich’s lower lip. Rich gives a low, growling huff— amusement? arousal? does Rafael dare hope for both?—and kisses each of Rafael’s other fingers before letting it go.

  “As much as you like, gorgeous,” Rich smiles, and takes firm hold of Rafael’s hips. “As long as you want it. C’mere.”

  As much and as long as Rafael wants turns out to be both more and less than he would have expected. Much longer and harder than he would have gone when he was a free man, before Carraway’s drugs and tinctures, but far less than he could have taken before his years alone. Carraway makes sure that his boys can maintain their unwilling enjoyment for hours upon hours, when he’s interested in using them, but without the admittedly thorough exercise of torment and teasing, Rafael’s body has fallen into disrepair even for more pleasant exertions.

  But in a way, it holds its own pleasure and satisfaction to stop as exhaustion begins to drag at him, at his own whim instead of some cruel master’s, and just lie with his head pillowed against the swell of an enormous shoulder.

  He’s been tired for years—he hasn’t been satiated in even longer, a warmer and more pleasant exhaustion than he can remember. Rich is stroking his back softly as if he were a cat. If Rafael were, he’d be purring.

  “You’re very good at this,” Rafael says finally. His voice is still hushed, a breathy whisper, but there’s no stress to it. It feels only right to lie quietly and speak softly in the warm hollow of a partner’s body.

  “I try, beautiful,” Rich murmurs back. Ear pressed to his flesh, Rafael can hear the vast, oceanic rush of his breath, and the deep bass thrum of some deeper, more intimate structure. Hastings growl differently than lykoi: it’s not a throaty mammalian snarl, but something more resonant from low in the chest, like alligators. But Rich hasn’t growled at him once, not in anger or in threat.

  “At sweetness, I mean,” Rafael says, musing, and feels the hand on his back pause for a moment and then firm, holding him closer. “Not just sex. You’re good at… being good to us.”

  “Yeah,” Rich says, sounding even more gratified now. “Yeah, I really try. That’s—I’m glad you think so. You were so scared…” His huge hand cups warmly around the base of Rafael’s skull, cradling it. “You gotta tell me, okay? If you need me to stop something, or fuck off a while or anything. Lemme know?”

  “No, this is just perfect, don’t move,” Rafael assures him. Rich nods, relaxes, and continues to pet him.

  “I didn’t mean to… make you cater to my insecurity,” Rafael offers. “I had no reason to suspect the worst of you, really.”

  Rich snorts inelegantly. “You got handed off to a guy twice your size for the night and you don’t know me from a hole in the hull. I’d be a hell of an asshole if I got on your case about it. And I mean, I’m a Hastings. So.”

  This last is said with such bitterness that Rafael actually startles in on himself, pushing reflexively up onto his elbows. Rich already looks sorry, his broad mouth hitched to one side, his thick eyebrows creasing together.

  “Hey, I’m not mad,” he says. “I get it, okay. I’m not mad. Hastings are a whole lot of scary motherfucker to have to deal with up close and personal. I can’t blame anyone for not wanting anything to do with ‘em.”

  He’s not mad, but he’s not happy, either.

  “You’re not like the others,” Rafael says, reaching for an easy reassurance: and it works, like a miracle, like the sun coming back out. Rich’s brows smooth and he almost smiles.

  “No,” he says, and relaxes back against the bed. “No, I’m not. I’m a prisoner here, too. Just one with extra-large cuffs and a lot of confused cousins.”

  Rafael’s confused, too. He runs his hand idly across Rich’s massive chest, feeling the flex of cushion-sized muscles, trying to assemble any sort of diplomatic inquiry that isn’t also a terrible insult. If Carraway was in the habit of fucking his prisoners of war before, Rafael didn’t know about it. If Carraway had a taste for men this size and shape, his captive harem has certainly never reflected it.

  “You do seem… unique,” Rafael finally says. Rich snorts again.

  “That’s a nice way of putting it,” he says. “I’m from the Free Society of the Michigan Fleet. It’s, uh… it’s like, a worker’s co-op, I guess you’d call it landside? Up north on Lake Michigan.”

  He looks down, gauging Rafael’s expression; for once, Rafael makes no effort to hide his bafflement.

  Rich rumbles to himself and then brightens and says, “You know Family Fleet? Seems like people landside know Family Fleet, at least. That’s us. I mean, we make it, and… and it’s us, we’re like that. I mean, we all try to be. So everybody gets to live safe, and help out, and eat enough, and… and be free.”

  “Ah,” Rafael says, a placeholder noise as his mind spins. Family Fleet, the free educational children’s show about a cast of gently silly animal puppets and human children all living and learning positive things about making friends and getting along and living together in harmony. That show.

  That accent. N’Orleans by way of Chicago, pinched vowels and elided consonants… His voice pitched down fathoms deep, Rich has the exact same accent as all those sweet, cheerful, good-natured felt animals. He could probably do Alfred Otter’s lines with perfect intonation.

  Rafael says slowly, testingly: “You’re not a soldier. You’re not from somewhere that has soldiers.”

  Rich gives a deep sigh of utter relief, as if finally free of a crushing weight.

  “You get it. I’m in tech support.”

  This is very nearly a bridge too far.

  “Tech support,” Rafael repeats, astonished. “What, as in—repairing tablets? Taking calls on, on malfunctioning—gizmos?”

  The body beneath him seizes in laughter, so deep and musical Rafael can feel it wash through his own bones.

  “Gizmos and thingamajigs,” Rich chuckles. “Doodads a specialty. I mean, around here I take whatever work I can get, I’m that bored. Back home… back home I was… a little more useful.”

  He sobers, reaches a hand up to rub his pale temple, the craggy angles of his face turning to forbidding stone under the burden of some strange and terrible pain. Says finally, “Guys get run aground sometimes, where I come from. Kicked out, I mean, put off landside. If they fuck up enough. Back when I was—” A rough huff of a sigh. “I was worried that’s how I’d end up. So I fixed my shit up, I pulled my weight, I was useful. And thanks to some landside asshole, I still ended up…”

  “Run aground,” Rafael finishes for him after a moment. Rich blinks those green eyes down at him, gleaming too bright, and then makes a formless noise and drops his head back to stare up at the ceiling instead, one huge hand still at his temple, tracing a line there over and over again.

  Rich is hardly a poet, but the metaphor has some art to it, although Rafael doubts he meant it as such. Near a dozen young men, artists and workmen, patricians and craftsmen, each in the midst of their own voyages—now cast upon the rocks, stranded on this cruel shore.

  Some part of Rafael wants to be vicious and ugly, jealous that Rich is so fresh a captive as to still be openly anguished over the loss. Rafael’s been here five years, long enough to buy an education or start a family or lose all the fine details of the life you used to have when you were free. The colors and edges and in-jokes, the sense of place. The sense of purpose.

  “Tell me about it,” Rafael says gently, instead of venting any poison. “You lived on Lake Michigan, and Family Fleet is set on all those different little boats. Were you a fishing village, when you weren’t filming your episodes?”

  Rich turns his head a little, smiling oddly. “I think we’re talking past each other,” he says. “I’m from the middle of Lake Michigan, the Michigan Fleet is all boats. The whole thing, all of us, we all live on boats in the middle of the lake, forever. Is that clear enough? The first time I ever set foot on land, I was twenty-two. And I fell over immediately. I’m still not such a big fan of solid ground, honestly. There's bugs.”

  Rafael tries to imagine this. “So you’re telling me you’re like the Ouachita mole-men. Except on a lake.”

  “I’ve never heard of the washy-whatever mole-men,” Rich says frankly. “Where’re they?”

  “Hm. A good deal west of here.” Rafael purses his lips thoughtfully. “And half a mile underground, I suppose.”

  “Well, then sure, fine. I’m whatever the hell you just said, why not.” Rich smiles. “God, the world’s really big, isn’t it?”

  Outside of here, outside of the compound that’s been Rafael’s life for five damned and blighted years—yes. He nods. It was so big, and so beautiful, and he’d loved it so much.

  “You must have seen a lot of it,” Rich says. “You and Connor—he was a traveling veterinarian, in the Appalachians. Sol stuck to New York, mostly, he’s kind of a snob about that, but I dunno your accent. And I don’t know anywhere where they just do lines of Shakespeare all the time. It’s—it’s cute.” He bites his lip, looking worried suddenly. “I mean, cool. It’s neat. Real classy.”

  Rafael’s face heats. Cute. Well, that’s a lot better than bizarre or pretentious.

  “I am—I was, a thespian of the Bread and Roses troupe,” he says as some measure of explanation, and Rich nods, although his expression is largely one of benevolent incomprehension. “The bard himself was not our only material, but it was… the one nearest my own heart, I suppose. You have Shakespeare, in your Fleet?”

  He worries for a split second the teasing will elude Rich as the explanation seems to have, but the man’s craggy face splits in one of those startling warm smiles.

  “Oh, no, yeah, we gave him his own fifty and he’s doin’ fine,” Rich says. “Healthy as anything, y’know. Just put a play out last year.”

  Rafael huffs out a quiet but completely genuine laugh. “I’d love to see it,” he says. “God, I’d watch anything you put in front of me, at this point. You live with the inside of your own head for long enough—” and you start sounding entirely too pathetic and crazy for a man trying to give a flattering first impression to a new lover. He gives a carefully light, careless shrug.

  “Huh. We can do that.” Rich sits up, easing Rafael off to one side, and clenches his fingers briefly together. Rafael barely contains a startled jolt when a hologram screen flickers up above Rich's palm. Knowing the man has data rings is one thing, but to see the screen appear from nothing is startling and miraculous, still.

  “I don’t have access to my own damn neural net anymore, so I can’t offer you any Fleet productions, but there’s a media archive on the local server. If you can call it a server.”

  “…Carraway’s compound has a media archive?” Rafael asks. “I mean, proper media?” He’s been bored out of his entire damn mind for five years and there was a media archive around here somewhere, not just the insipid collection of naturecams, travelstreams, and classical sportscaps that play on the decorative wall screens adorning the mansion’s endless supply of parlors and studies. To say nothing of the decorative, content-free books that populate the stately shelves and mantle pieces… The surge of bitter rage is just as familiar as the necessary exercise of self-control to push it back down before any sign of it reaches his face.

  “I mean even I know it’s basic as all hell,” Rich says, “and not user-friendly, but yeah. I’ll show you how to tap it when you get your rings. God, I miss my implants. Here we go…”

  Rich shuffles himself further upright against the headboard, and then makes a series of tight, practiced, beautiful motions with hands that should be far too big and powerful to be capable of such delicacy. The hologram screen flickers and subdivides and changes display frames as he navigates—something—Rafael’s never been adroit with digital systems, he could just about use his troupe’s chunky old hardframe tablet to manage his immediate family’s accounts in a spreadsheet app without setting anything on fire. Labors such as calculating the entire troupe’s itinerary and managing its social media presence he left to his little brother, who cared for that kind of thing.

  Well, he’s going to have to learn. At least some component of it seems to be physical, Rafael knows he can manage physical dexterity. He can still juggle, even, he's practiced on the rare occasion boredom or impulse drove him from his bed to test his tumbling skills.

  Rich must find something he’s looking for, because he brightens, then pats the bedspread right beside his hip invitingly. Rafael settles himself against Rich’s side without hesitation, which seems to go over well, because Rich gives him a warm, pleased smile and drops one of his huge arms around Rafael’s shoulders. He smells delicious like this, like good sex and unexpected safety.

  “What’s your favorite play?” he asks with eager, intimate invitation.

  Rafael is completely distracted by the enormity of the question. He knows what his favorite play used to be, or at least the one nearest to his heart. But it’s been so many years since he saw it, since he even spoke it, here in this den of monsters. He doesn’t want to watch it, here in the dark with a collar around his throat.

  For a bizarre second he struggles with grief and bitter anger and something like panic, and then he shoves it all down again and breathes in, grounds himself in the here and now, the arm around his shoulders, focuses.

  Rich is studying his face with unnerving intensity: not like Carraway’s ever done it, like he’s judging whether or not Rafael’s being good enough, but like he’s actually trying to see past his act, suss out what Rafael’s really thinking. Rafael can feel himself retreating into stiff blankness just from how terrifying that kind of attention is, even though he knows Rich won’t like it… and he doesn’t. He frowns, sighs, runs one of his hands over his sweat-tufted hair, and awkwardly takes his arm back from around Rafael’s shoulder.

  “Think about it a minute,” he says gently as the screen vanishes, and shifts his massive bulk away across the mattress to fish a packet of wipes from the uselessly ornate bedside table, cleaning himself with the ponderous fastidiousness of a bull elephant.

  The lack of his arm and his intimate regard feels like a glorious prize being taken immediately back again. In the loss of that warmth, Rafael finds he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and it’s only when Rich turns back and offers him one of the wipes in turn that he remembers he’s been set a task.

  He cleans off as quickly and demurely as he can, thoughts racing—not a tragedy, he mustn’t seem miserable and uninviting. Not a history, that will hardly keep the man’s interest…

  “I have a particular fondness for Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he says, finally, and Rich studies him and decides, with a deliberate, indulgent gentleness painted clearly across his face, not to convict Rafael of the lie.

  “Sure, man,” he says, and draws up the screen again. “Let’s see what we got.”

  He taps something and the bedroom light abruptly winks out, leaving only the dim glow of the screen to pick out Rich’s pale face and arms from the darkness. With a few more of his tight, elegant gestures, the hologram screen flickers and snaps, now showing a short list, a row of video squares.

  “There’s the Miranda translation from the Globe in London, there’s the Roman, but that’s in Italian, from Naples. Do you speak Italian?”

  Rafael shakes his head, spellbound, and Rich chuffs and shrugs, green eyes glittering with mischief.

  “Hey, you’re fancy, you coulda for all I know! We got the Sondheim Classic edition… hey, that’s a New York theater! You like New York? All the best stuff is from there, if you ask Sol.”

  “Including the man himself,” Rafael murmurs, and is encouraged when Rich lets out a deep chuckle. “But the Sondheim would be—fantastic, if you’d be so kind. That’s the original language Shakespeare wrote in, early modern English. That’s how I learned them.”

  “That must’ve been nice,” Rich says with every sign of sincerity. “Okay, let’s do New York. We can go brag to Sol tomorrow morning about how cultured we got.”

  The Sondheim theater’s recording of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream is the definitive rendition, as far as Rafael’s concerned: the best actors caught at the height of their game, the most elegant staging, the finest costuming. And the language, too, just as it was from Shakespeare’s own pen, preserved across the yawning centuries, the same lovely meter as Rafael practiced with his own parents…

  And it’s been years since he’s been able to watch anything besides smooth processions through lovely mountain peaks and sunny tropical beachscapes, or high-definition drone footage of picturesque animals lounging about, so there’s that.

  He forgets himself for awhile, just getting to watch a familiar story told to him all over again by these beloved specters, long-gone actors alive again on a stage that stands proud once more against the dark. When Puck finally bows himself away and the hologram screen dims to a blank translucency, Rafael realizes he’s leaned in close against Rich’s side and he’s been weeping steadily for some time. Rich's arm is around him again, that big hand petting him very gently.

  Rich doesn't say anything, doesn't pry or chide or worry at him, just holds him in the warm and quiet darkness.

  Eventually, Rafael pulls himself back together. It takes an effort this time, and he can’t bring himself to pull away from the arm that’s wrapped around him. It's his, just for now. Someone to hold him.

  “We should… get some sleep,” he manages. “It seems we’ve much to do tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, I bet you’re all worn out,” Rich sighs. “Wouldn’t mind a nap, myself.” He squeezes Rafael once, kisses his forehead—an unexpected cruelty of kindness, a tenderness which nearly cracks Rafael’s chest open along the middle and tears his heart from it. The man seems unaware that he’s left Rafael stunned and reeling, eyes prickling, just climbs off the bed to turn the covers down.

  It’s a large bed, once Rafael has crept under the covers—but Rich is a very large man, and takes up at least two thirds of it. He tolerates Rafael’s cautious resettling with the grace of a bear disregarding a mouse, showing no sign of impatience when a stray limb glances against him, and only once Rafael has settled down does he move himself, relaxing into the mattress with a deep, rumbling sigh.

  It seems somehow both desperately childish and boldly coquettish, but it’s been so very long since someone touched him so sweetly—Rafael inches cautiously closer, feeling those thoughtful green eyes on him, and settles close enough to feel the man’s warmth, nudging himself against one huge, rough hand and resting there in mute, hopeful stillness.

  Rich takes his own turn to shift just as slowly, just as carefully, and cups a hand around the back of Rafael’s head. Cautious at first, and then settling, softening, as Rafael closes his eyes and doesn’t shake the touch away or flinch. One huge thumb moves with fantastic gentleness, and rubs back and forth over Rafael’s close-cropped hair.

  “It’s gonna be okay, hon,” Rich murmurs quietly in the dark.

  No one’s said that to him in so long. No one’s cared enough to lie. Rafael wants to laugh, wants to say, absurdly, “Thank you,” wants to cry again. Instead he just holds very still, feeling that kindness sink into some parched and dusty remainder of his soul, and he falls asleep with surprising speed.